Don’t Assume Documents Are Authentic

Falsifying documents, particularly diplomas, is more common than most employers would like to believe. Just a week ago, we received a

GED verification for a candidate which had an issue date that was the same as the candidate’s date of birth! It turned out that the GED verification was another person with the same name.

My classic story is about trying to verify a diploma from a college in Wales. We finally asked that a copy of the diploma be sent to us. It looked authentic. It started with the usual “To all who shall see these presents, Greetings:” We sent it to the college in Wales for verification. After several days we received a very polite letter from the Registrar’s Office. It began, “First of all, if this was a diploma from our college, it would have been written in Latin, not in English.” It went on, “We hope your client will take an equally dim view of this sort of prevarication.”

In another instance, we uncovered a candidate who was trying to pass off his son’s diploma as his own. They had the same names; but, upon closer inspection, we noted that the president of the university who had signed the diploma was not the same president at the time the candidate claimed to have been there!

There are little tricks of the trade that will normally uncover this type of falsification. At Barada Associates, we like to think we’re very good at making sure that all pertinent diplomas and other documents are authentic and accurate.